Sometimes I forget that my iPhone is a cell phone. You know, like making and receiving person-to-person calls. The way it's 'sposed to be.

I'm listening to Pandora on my iPhone. It's a programmable station. You enter the name of a piece of favorite music--any genre--and it selects others of the same/similar genre. You tap "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" to tell Pandora if you like it, or not.

If you click "thumb down" on a particular selection, it stops immediately and goes to the next. Over a couple of weeks, I've trained it sufficiently that nearly every song is one I like, including some I've never heard before. I just got earbuds so that I can listen privately.

Right now it's the Eagles' "Hotel California". I've put the iPhone in my pocket, threaded the cable to the ear buds up underneath my shirt, and I'm hands free, to wander about the house as I please, listening to music.

I have Amazon's Cloud Player app, too, to listen to music I've purchased in the past few years through my Amazon account.

And I monitor my physical activities--walking, stairs, calories burned--via an app on my iPad.

I check the weather in my city or in cities around the globe (including New Zealand) by means of another app that I tap.

I get stuck waiting for an appointment, I have the New York Times crossword app and also Solitaire.

Plus NBC news app to check current events.

And how could I forget? Check email at will.

Oh, yeah, and I make phone calls too. Once in a while. I'm not a phone user, as my long time readers will recall, due to a traumatic childhood event. Still, the cell phone is a great way for on-the-go contact, like the last time we were at a huge conference: when my group got separated, we re-grouped via cell phone calls.

Yup. Cell phone is a great telephone. But don't take away my apps!